Digital and Analog

One of my long-term beliefs is that everything digital is impermanent, and everything analog capable of being permanent. 

I recently cleaned out some old stuff I'd be keeping for no particular reason; the third grade lit magazines and kindergarten reading assignments were intact and in basically the same condition as when they were first put into storage. The pencil writing hadn't even faded yet.

I have few to no digital files of older age than my dissertation because of storage, program and backward compatibility issues: the floppy disks with my junior high and high school writing are long gone, as are AIM transcripts, college papers (the printouts are fine), and many ages of digital pictures. Blogger only seems to still exist because Google has forgotten about it.

Having spent a bit of time on the programming side of things, it's not difficult to understand why this is: the move to continuous deployment and microservices is better for engineers (less testing and less worry about one change breaking everything) and sales (charge monthly or annually for the theoretical possibility of new and improved features), but it can make for a mess of code with lots of dependencies and somewhat capricious decisions about when it's no longer worth supporting something. It can be an environment where conserving (backward-compatibilizing) becomes a tremendous strain or resources and planning; better not to mess with it.